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Women and children very much participate in farming back then, harvest was a “all hands on deck” situation. Similarly by adding ‘and clothe bodies’ that captur
by Retric 9mo ago
Women and children very much participate in farming back then, harvest was a “all hands on deck” situation.
Similarly by adding ‘and clothe bodies’ that captures well over half of a typical woman’s labor back then. Drop spindles sucked up an enormous amount of labor before you even had cloth.
- bluGill 9mo agoAt times it was all hands on deck for harvest - but most of the time it wasn't and that rest is an important part of village life missing. As you say, drop spindles suck.
- ab5tract 9mo agoIf you aren’t reaping of sowing, your labor isn’t in the fields anyway. People don’t understand that there are ebbs and flows to a farming life. There is always work to do but no one is out in the fields much unless it’s harvest or seeding times.
- bluGill 9mo agoMany crops are not hands off. wheat chokes out weeds, but you need to weed the garden. You need to water crops in a drough - if you could get water (from a well or river). rice needs a lot of labor to manage water levels
- eapressoandcats 9mo agoBret Deveraux linked to estimates that 70% of producing clothes is spinning, 20% is weaving, and 10% is sewing. We tend to think of weaving as the time consuming thing but that’s because the spinning wheel had been around for a while by the time the Industrial Revolution happened.